Kinshasa heat

From busking in their home city to a genre-defining funk album and sold out UK tour, Staff Benda Bilili are taking their unique Congolese sound around the world. Cathy Reay went to meet and see them in action

In the Congo we play on the streets in front of restaurants, or wherever we know that there are people who might pay us something.”

Leon “Ricky” Likabu is about to get the shock of his life. He’s speaking to us just hours before he is set to join the rest of his band of paraplegic melody makers on a stage in front of 1,500 plus people at London’s Barbican Centre, who have individually paid more to see them than they might make in a day on the streets of their home town, Kinshasa. This is the beginning of the biggest tale of rags-to-riches you are going to hear this year. And the greatest thing? Nobody believed they could do it.

“Of course we have other jobs!” he tells me almost incredulously, as if the suggestion of being a full-time musician is entirely implausible. Thing is, until now it kind of was. In Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, life is simple. There is little electricity and precious little connection to the outside world. And of course this means that inside that world, anything that might be a bit different from the norm is treated with a mixture of disbelief and caution. So when Ricky, Coco, Théo et al tried to join ‘regular’ bands, they were turned down, laughed at: “you’ll be late for everything, you’ll hold us up, they’d say. So we came together and made our own band.

And what a band they are. Ricky, who plays guitar and shares vocals with Coco Ngambali, Théo Nsituvuidi and Djunana Tanga-Suele, all of whom are in wheelchairs are joined by Kabamba Kabose Kasungo on crutches, Cubain Kabeya on percussion and drums and 17-year-old prodigy Roger Landu on the satonge, a single-string instrument of his own invention that produces a sound more wild and high-pitched than any kind of guitar we’ve ever heard.
Though I’m told this is roughly the ‘permanent’ line-up, the faces change almost daily according to who can make each performance, whoever can be bothered to show up.

When they do hit the stage the following evening, in front of a predominantly white, non-disabled, middle-class crowd, Staff Benda Bilili, who don’t speak a word of English, have nothing else to give other than a breathtaking two hour frenzied performance of mind-blowing funk and rumba. The wheelchairs don’t stop the 50-something musicians, in cowboy hats and cheap tailored suits, from grooving in their seats and Djunana goes so far as to leap out of his chair, sprawling across the floor in hypnotising discombobulated dance moves. By the end, the whole audience is up from their seats imitating him, not in pity, but because he looks like he’s having such a good time.

“Our message is that if your head is ‘working’, anything is possible. We shouldn’t wait for others to take care of us; if you fight for yourself, you can achieve,” says Ricky.

And it seems like Staff Benda Bilili are doing just that. In a native situation where disabled people have to beg just to get by, these men are going above and beyond to try and ensure that ‘just getting by’ is not the motto of future generations of the Congolese ‘handicapped’, as they call themselves.

“It took a long time, but now we’re finally recognised as good musicians in our own country,” Ricky smiles. He says his band wants to be the best musicians in Africa and, while this might be a steep dream, they’ve definitely come a long way from the streets.

• Staff Benda Bilili’s debut album Très Très Fort is out now through Crammed Discs http://www.crammed.be/staffbendabilili/